Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2018 i Popular Mechanics South Africa

COMPETITION WINNERS Details online at www.popularmechanics.co.za At least not in the digital world. I’ve personally traded my privacy to every leading technology company that can offer me a service that even moderately improves my life. But then something happened on the day we were shooting the images for the smart-homes feature on page 38 that altered my perceptions. You see, most of the products in those shots are our own and that meant bringing my Google Home into work. It usually lives above a cupboard in the kitchen, far from my two-year-old's grubby little paws. When taking it down, I left the step ladder in position so putting it back would be a simple task. My wife video-called me from home to say good night to the kids and there…

Proud soda-sipping Americans use more than 500 million plastic straws every day. They’re too light to pass through recycling sorters, resulting in 250 tons of daily trash. Too much of that ends up floating across the country’s lakes, rivers, and shores. If you haven’t seen the viral YouTube video of biologists pulling a straw out of the bleeding nose of a turtle, note that scientists have also found plastic perforating the stomachs of penguins, and estimate that more than a million birds die each year from plastic consumption. Experts estimate that by 2050, there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish. With a handful of purely medical exceptions, straws are entirely and incontrovertibly unnecessary. And yet, I can’t live without them. When I order an iced coffee, or…

The SA Innovation Summit is the yearly flagship event on the South African innovation calendar and serves as a platform for nurturing, developing and showcasing African innovation, while simultaneously facilitating innovation thought-leadership. It was first created to support and promote innovation and enable collaboration within its own ecosystem, bringing together corporates, thought leaders, inventors, entrepreneurs, academics and policy makers to amplify South Africa’s renowned competitive edge and inspire sustained economic growth across Africa. At its core, the Innovation Summit enables the tech entrepreneur to leapfrog systematic change to alleviate poverty, propel inclusiveness and meet Industry 4.0 head-on. Large business, curricula in the universities and government policies can’t move fast enough to keep up with the technological changes, but innovators can. There are six main tracks for the 2018 Summit: FinTech,…

‘HEY, GOOGLE, PLAY ME SOMETHING I’LL LIKE…’ ‘OKAY, PLAYING “THAT’S WHAT I LIKE” BY BRUNO MARS ON PLAY MUSIC.’ ‘HEY, GOOGLE. NO… NEVER MIND.’ ‘PLAYING THE ALBUM NEVERMIND BY NIRVANA.’ ‘I GUESS THAT’S BETTER.’ The above exchange is a graphic verbal expression of buyer’s remorse. It happens every other day, when I confuse the skills of my two most-used voice assistants. In the modern world of ambient computing – a world where the computers are all around you, awaiting your command – my fiefdom is ruled over by Siri and Google Assistant. I picked up a Google Home on a heavy discount while off on an international trip because I simply couldn’t find an Apple HomePod in either Paris or Frankfurt. I found one in Dubai a couple of weeks…

THE FIRST rule of tree-house building is that it all kind of depends on the tree. You can model yours on this one, or on your neighbour’s, or on one you saw on Treehouse Masters, but the tree (or trees) in your garden will be different – thicker, farther apart, closer together, stronger, weaker – and your design will change accordingly. The second rule is the kids should be involved. The building of a tree house was a major selling point when we told our boys we were moving out of the big, exciting city to a sleepy rural town. I still have our older son’s hand-drawn plans for what he wanted it to look like. (It’s close.) And they both drove some nails and screws, and found some cool…

1 / D-Link Wi-Fi Water Sensor Setup happens via an app and is all quite simple. The device comes with a 48 cm lead and the option of a metre-long extension, if you’re trying to protect something farther away from the plug. When it senses water, the D-Link has a 70 dB alarm, which is hard to hear if you’re not in the next room, honestly. It also sends an immediate push alert to your phone, along with an email. R760 2 / Zircon Leak Alert Wi-Fi It’s about the size of a point-and-shoot camera. When the two wire sensors are exposed to water, the device screams at you with a 105 dB alarm, and sends an email alert to up to five addresses. The battery should last you about…

OWNER : Andre Tran LOCATION: Huntington Beach, California FOUND IN : Japan PURCHASE PRICE : ±R310 000 YEARS OWNED: One A FEW YEARS back, a few friends and I went to Japan and met up with some locals who were also into cars and drifting. They were showing us around a garage, and I saw this RX-7 up on a lift. It was like gold, with all the rare parts and body panels you don’t see anymore. They had retuned the rotary engine, the brakes, the suspension, and upgraded everything. It reminded me of the one from Initial D, an old Japanese TV show about street racing. I was ready to buy it, but was a bit too young to qualify for the 25-year rule – so I couldn’t legally…

Picture an old friend’s face. New brainwave-reading technology could soon convert that mental image of their smile to a digital image on a computer screen. In an initial proof of concept, researchers at the University of Toronto used an electroencephalogram, or EEG, to record brain waves of study participants while they concentrated on a picture of a face. The lab could then translate the brain activity into a mirror image of the picture using machine-learning algorithms to map and then interpret patterns and small differences in the electrical signals. Similar work has been performed with room-size functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machines. But the research group, led by psychology professor Adrian Nestor, proved the technology could be used with the far more accessible and portable EEG, which amounts to a…

What does the notch in the nose of a linesman’s pliers do? That setup is called a New England Nose. After cutting a piece of conduit to length, you stick the nose into the end so that the notch fits over the end of the conduit and twist it back and forth. The notch’s sharp edge removes (or reams) the jagged burr left by cutting. Tool legend has it that the technique was pioneered by fast-working New England electricians, who ground a notch in their pliers. Manufacturers soon picked up the idea, and the rest is pliers history. My brother says the ivy on our house and chimney is causing damage. We think it’s pretty. Who’s right? Well, you’re both right, but unfortunately your brother is righter. Ivy belongs on…

IF YOU’VE EVER, like me, relied on a bottle of Advil to get you through a weekend project, you know how frustrating back pain can be. And you don’t need to be a bricklayer to feel beat up. Being handy is tough on the body. I’ve learned to be good to my back now and can work as hard as ever. But it took some painful lessons. In 2002, years of ignoring lower-back aches and shooting pains came home to roost at 2 am on a Saturday morning. I was woken by a sudden shooting pain in my hip so severe, I thought someone had broken in and stabbed me with an ice pick. I was practically paralysed. The physical therapist I went to told me that intense physical labour,…

TO REMOVE stubborn grit from frying pans, reader Daniel Simmons remembers an old family trick. He pours enough leftover coffee or Coca-Cola into the pan to cover the grit, then heats the pan on medium-high for a few minutes. After removing the pan from the burner, the grit can usually be scraped off with a plastic putty knife. FROM—THE—ARCHIVES (1955) Waterproof matches If you’re heading out for a backpacking trip to the lake but are out of waterproof matches, you can make your own. Safety matches dipped in melted candle or paraffin wax resist moisture and are ideal for the outdoorsman. Heat the wax up until it flows, then dip the matches so the head and stems are entirely coated. Matches treated this way will not be badly affected by…

ULTIMATE RECYCLING Recently, the plastic base plate that mounts the top box that sits on the rear carrier of my 2001 Honda Africa Twin developed a nasty crack, probably from all the off-road work I’ve subjected the machine to. With the chances of finding a replacement part for that 17-year-old aftermarket item extremely unlikely, I had to make plan to fix it myself. What I needed was a very high quality, strong, smooth, perfectly shaped and rounded, small piece of steel of just the right width with the holes positioned in such a way as to best join two ends of a broken piece of something tightly together. So, scratching through the odds-and-ends junk box, I found one of the surgical plates that had been inserted into my arm back…

1987 The Legend of Zelda was a big, sprawling epic when it launched on the Nintendo Entertainment System, and took a long time to complete. Not expecting gamers to be glued to the screen for days on end, Nintendo built memory right into the cartridge so players could save their progress to come back to it later. 1991 Nintendo’s update to the NES, called the SNES (Super Nintendo Entertainment System) brought reimagined controllers boasting industry-first shoulder buttons. It was a landmark console for many other reasons – enhancement chips included in the cartridges powered sophisticated new 3D graphics on certain games, for example – but the new shoulder buttons endure to this day. 1996 What many consider to be the finest console of all time (maybe just the editor of…

Marijuana may be legal in Colorado, but that doesn’t mean the US state has no illegal marijuana. A number of legal growers are illegally selling cannabis across state lines, and illegal growers can forge a paper trail to enter the legal market. It’s becoming a problem for law enforcement, which needs to combat this grey market to keep the state’s ±R18.8 trillion cannabis industry on the right side of federal compliance. Starting this year, the state could be able to identify all above-board cannabis. Using technology previously employed to follow premium American cotton from gin to shirt, growers spray their legal plants with DNA that acts like a molecule-sized encrypted bar code. By bonding to the plant – but not changing its DNA – the tag withstands processing, and even…

FOR THE LOVE OF GADGETS • Compiled by BRENDON PETERSEN (brendon.petersen@ramsaymedia.co.za) I’m a huge fan of wireless headphones – and not just because smartphone manufacturers are forcing us to love them. The problem with most on-ear or over-ear wireless headphones is that they’re fairly heavy and therefore not something you want to wear for a long period of time, or they’re ridiculously expensive. iFrogz Aurora wireless headphones address all of these issues. They’re comfortable and subtly stylish enough that they won’t draw unwanted attention (and affordable). These on-ear headphones have an adjustable headband, aero-foam ear cushions and a built-in microphone, so you can make or answer calls. Auroras boast 40 mm drivers, on-ear controls and up to 10 hours of battery life. If you don’t want to go wireless, there’s…

Your spine has 23 intervertebral discs between its vertebrae that act as shock absorbers. Each disc has a thick, fibrous outer layer and a gel-like centre. When a disc gets too much pressure on one side, the gel pushes toward and can rupture the opposite side of the outer layer. That’s a herniated disc. It’s most prevalent in men ages 30 to 50, and almost always in the lumbar (lower) spine. It’s certainly not the only cause of back pain, but it’s one of the most severe and surprisingly common. Painful on its own, an unlucky herniated disc can also press on nearby nerves for an extra layer of hurt. 1 KNEELING OVERHEAD SQUAT Hold a pole, such as a rake handle, with a wide grip. Kneel and hold the…

THIS WEATHER ISN’T what Southern California promised. It’s cold and overcast, with a chance of ‘Why is this happening to me?’ My trusty passenger/wife, Jess, and I are ready to ride up north along a foggy patch of the Pacific Coast Highway on the newest edition of Honda’s sofa on wheels, the 2018 Gold Wing. The rain suits are in our hard cases, the heated seat and grips are warming up, and the power windshield is fully extended. With a 1 833 cc flat-six and a seven-speed dual-clutch auto transmission (no shifting) beneath us, I wonder when luxury cruising got so good. In 1975, the new Honda GL1000 was a normal, stripped-down, street-style bike. It housed a kick-start 999 cc flat-four and a five-speed transmission mounted on a steel frame.…

Makita XSC WEIGHT: 2.9 kg DEPTH OF CUT: 54 mm LIKES: Compact and powerful, the Makita was the only saw that made it through 50 mm conduit – and with a little room to spare. Its spindle lock is also smooth and easy to use. DISLIKES: We’re nitpicking, but there is a bit of recoil when you pull the trigger. R2 520 (tool only – no battery or charger) A / Bosch CSM180-01 WEIGHT: 2.9 kg DEPTH OF CUT: 49 mm LIKES: Easy handling, lightweight, and compact, the Bosch sailed through everything we put in front of it, from thick-walled pipe to heavy plate. And it has a convenient hanging hook. DISLIKES: It is the only option without a front handle. While that can mean better sight lines and reduced…

Your hint could win you a hamper stocked with a 44 mm-wide zinc-plated coloured padlock, an M1 Excell padlock and an armoured cable motorbike lock. The Masterlock 44 mm fusion coloured padlock has a 44 mm-wide zinc-plated body for durability and strength. Dual locking levers, shrouded hardened steel shackle and a front access keyway add extra toughness and ease of use. Masterlock M1 Excell padlock. Masterlock, owner of over 40 patents, used the toughest boron alloy material and cutting-edge technology to create the Excell. This solution is 50 per cent stronger than a standard padlock and is a truly high-security solution. These laminated steel padlocks are available in different sizes for a wider range of applications, both indoor and outdoor. The Excell is ideal for securing storefront gates, sheds or…